SRI YUKTESWAR GIRI QUOTES

To keep company with the guru is not only to be in physical presence (as this is sometimes impossible), but mainly means to keep him in our hearts and to be one with him in principle and to attune ourselves with him.

Forget you were born a Hindu, and don't be an American. Take the best of them both. Be your true self, a child of God. Seek and incorporate into your being the best qualities of all your brothers, scattered over the earth in various races.

Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary. Sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Otherwise, continual intellectual study may result in vanity, false satisfaction, and undigested knowledge.

Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.

“..So you have inexplicably failed to isolate The Supreme Power in your test tubes!” Masters gaze was stern. “I recommend a new experiment: examine your thoughts unremittingly for twenty-four hours. Then wonder no longer at God’s absence.”

The Lord responds to all and works for all. Just as He sent rain at my plea, so He fulfills any sincere desire of the devotee. Seldom do men realize how often God heeds their prayers. He is not partial to a few, but listens to everyone who approaches Him trustingly. His children should ever have implicit faith in the loving-kindness of their Omnipresent Father.

The deeper the realization of a man, the more he influences the whole universe by his subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less he himself is affected by the phenomenal flux.

I heard my mother remark occasionally: 'A man who accepts a job under anyone is a slave.' That impression became so indelibly fixed that even after my marriage I refused all positions. I met expenses by investing my family endowment in land. Moral: Good and positive suggestions should instruct the sensitive ears of children. Their early ideas long remain sharply etched.

The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more. Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, trying at the same time to remove yourself beyond their power. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!

Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.

The darkness of maya is silently approaching. Let us hie homeward within.

“Those who remove our troubles, dispel our doubts, and bestow peace are true teachers. They perform a Godlike work. Their opposites (those who increase our doubts and difficulties) are harmful to us and should be avoided like poison.”

Forget the outward symbols of renunciation, which may injure you by inducing a false pride. Nothing matters except your steady, daily spiritual advancement; for that, use Kriya Yoga.

There is a deeper astrology, not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks. Each man is a part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of earth. The human eye sees the physical form, but the inward eye penetrates more profoundly, even to the universal pattern of which each man is an integral and individual part.

The world illusion, maya, is individually called avidya, literally, not-knowledge, ignorance, delusion. Maya or avidya can never be destroyed through intellectual conviction or analysis, but solely through attaining the interior state of nirbikalpa Samadhi.

A worthy leader has the desire to serve, not to dominate.

If man's sleep be deep and dreamless, for several hours he is able to transfer his consciousness, or sense of I-ness, to the causal body; such sleep is revivifying.

All creation is governed by law. The principles that operate in the outer universe, discoverable by scientists are called natural laws. But there are subtle laws that rule the hidden spiritual planes and the inner realm of consciousness; these principles are knowable through the science of yoga. It is not the physicist but the Self realized master who comprehends the true nature of matter. By such knowledge Christ was able to restore the servant's ear after it had been severed by one of the disciples

"Just as the purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger, not greed, so the sex instinct is designed for the propagation of the species according to natural law, never for the kindling of insatiable longings," he said. "Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will follow you after the astral body is torn from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered.

Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don’t kick you around.

A true devotee is finally freed from all instinctive compulsions. He transforms his need for human affection into aspiration for God alone - a love solitary because omnipresent.

My guru Swami Sri Yukteswar wisely counselled: "Throw the dog a bone" - give the body its due, neither pampering nor abusing it, and then forget the body.

So long as you breathe the free air of earth, you are under obligation to render grateful service. He alone who has fully mastered the breathless state is freed from cosmic imperatives.

"Be comfortable within your purse. Extravagance will buy you discomfort."

“The root of pain is egoistic actions, which (being based on delusions) lead to misery.”

Remember that finding God will mean the funeral of all sorrows.

“The eight bondages or snares are hatred, shame, fear, grief, condemnation, race prejudice, pride of family and smugness. Removal of the eight bondages leads to magnanimity of the Heart. “

Look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you.

The rishis wrote in one sentence profundities that commentating scholars busy themselves over for generations. Endless literary controversy is for sluggard minds. What more quickly liberating thought than ‘God is’ - nay, ‘God’?

Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady.

Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon's knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable.

Wrath springs from thwarted desires. I do not expect anything from others, so their actions cannot be in opposition to wishes of mind.

A man of realization does not perform any miracles until he receives an inward sanction. God does not wish the secrets of His creation revealed promiscuously*. Also every individual in the world has an inalienable right to his free will. A saint will not encroach on that independence.

When this love, the heavenly gift of Nature, appears in the heart, it removes all causes of excitation from the system and cools it down to a perfectly normal state; and, invigorating the vital powers, expels all foreign matters- the germs of diseases-by natural ways (perspiration and so forth). It thereby makes man perfectly healthy in body and mind, And enables him to understand properly the guidance of Nature.

Parambrahma (Spirit or God) is everlasting, complete without beginning or end. It is one, indivisible Being.

The Holy Sound Pranava Sabda appears spontaneously through the culture of Sraddha the energetic tendency of heart’s natural love, Veerya the moral courage, Smiriti the true conception and Samadhi the true concentration.

Saintliness is not dumbness! Divine perceptions are not incapacitating! The active expression of virtue gives rise to the keenest intelligence.

“In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.

“Grieve not for me....You and I shall smile together, so long as our two forms appear different in the maya-dream of God. Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved; our smiles shall be His smile, our unified song of joy vibrating throughout eternity to be broadcast to God-tuned souls!”

Quotations there have been, in superabundance. But what original commentary can you supply, from the uniqueness of your particular life? What holy text have you absorbed and made your own? In what ways have these timeless truths renovated your nature? Are you content to be a hollow victrola, mechanically repeating the words of other men?